It is necessary to sort objects such as bottles, ampules, carpules, syringes, or the like from each other for packaging or treatment. They must be handled delicately, and must be oriented identically when they leave the sorting apparatus. Furthermore it is essential that the apparatus be able to do the required sorting without jamming up and thus leaving the downstream packaging/treatment machine with no supplies.
In German patent document 2,156,218 of O. Betz the bottles are delivered horizontally to a sorting drum having a multiplicity of radially open seats. The bottles are slid end-wise into the seats and the drum is rotated to transfer them into an upright condition on an output conveyor. This system has the disadvantage that the bottles must be meticulously fed bottom-first to the sorting drum so that any leakage will be certain to foul the conveyor or input device. Furthermore the outgoing bottles are grouped together in a manner that often requires further sorting before they are packaged or treated further.
Another device described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,653,328 of G. Pedrotto has a multiple chute arrangement that receives objects, here candies, from a conveyor belt and orders them into parallel rows, from which they are picked by a drum having seats that in theory handle only one candy at time. Such an arrangement is quite effective for this type of workpiece, but cannot be used for a more delicate bottle whose orientation is critical.
German patent document 1,004,103 of W. Sindzinski describes another sorting device that first separates the objects, once again a foodstuff, into rows, then picks the objects one at a time from the rows. Here the device is extremely long and the orientation of the object being sorted is not significant, so this system is not applicable to, for example, bottles.